Why the Game of Thrones Composer Watches Each Episode a Thousand Times

Film and television composer Ramin Djawadi got his big break the same way an actor or writer might: by complete coincidence. Originally from Germany, Djawadi (pronounced java-dee) was having a post-college dinner with the owner of a guitar store in Cologne—the same store he’d been buying his guitars from since he was a kid—and mentioned he wanted to get into “film music.” “And he said, ‘Well, I know somebody who knows somebody who knows Hans Zimmer.”

The connection was made, and Djawadi went on to compose the music for such films as Pacific Rim and Iron Man, and, currently, for Person of Interest, The Strain, and—start humming that theme song now—Game of Thrones. Djawadi’s sweeping music has done as much as anything else on the show to redefine the fantasy genre on television, lending weight and deep emotion to a show that, yes, is a lot about dragons and swords.

It started when Djawadi met with series showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to establish ground rules at the beginning. “I always like to ask, which instruments do you like and which do you not like, because any sort of restriction that they give to me helps me make decisions on what I write,” Djawadi said. The one instrument that was off-limits was the flute, so Djawadi opted for the rich, dark tones of the cello, which has such a wide range that sometimes he can just use it solo. “It can be so moody, which is so perfect for the show,” he says.

When Djawadi sits down with the producers to spot each episode, they watch it and talk about when the music should start and stop, what it should accomplish, and where they want to go with the story line. “We planted the Lannister theme in the first episode of season two,” he says, “where Tyrion walks in and actually whistles the theme.

The theme made, as most fans remember vividly, a famous return in the Red Wedding.
“You hear that music playing, and you go, ‘Oh my God,” Djawadi recalls, grimacing. “It was pretty hard to work on actually, because, obviously, you have to watch it over and over again. You just look at it like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening!’”

After that, Djawadi’s left to his own devices: “As I write the piece, I start out with a string line or a piano map. Then I actually start to arrange it, all the different instruments and different elements of the piece. Sometimes you get so microscopic [just] looking at one thing. And sometimes when you watch it as a whole, you think this piece is actually too big or too foreboding, so you make new discoveries. [Then I] go back over it and add all these layers.”

Djawadi estimates he watches each scene at least a thousand times throughout the entire process, as he sends the music back to producers and they listen to every piece, scene by scene, tweaking as they go. “Like maybe we should come in earlier, or maybe it’s too dark or too light.. The action-heavy scenes in particular require constant communication with the sound department, exchanging rough sketches before the final dub is mixed by the sound engineers,” Djawadi says.

“When we had the attack on the wall with the wildlings, because there’s all these weapons clinging, there’s fire, these big mammoths coming in, those giants...their footsteps were really big, so I just want to make sure I’m not stepping on that,” he explains.

Coming up with the theme, though, was “all a blur,” says Djawadi. After showing him the then unfinished opening—the main titles, the visuals—at the effects house, the producers explained that because the show had a lot of different locations, they wanted the opening to feel like a journey. “With that and the visuals in my head, I went and wrote that theme,” Djawadi says.

He says he has heard many of the different versions of the theme, including, probably, yours. “When the pilot aired, David and Dan sent me one of the first versions, a rock version. I was like, this is incredible. And more and more started popping up. I could not believe how creative people were. And how many different versions that a person could still come up with!” He’s seen the hard drive one, the cat one, the violin one, and the one that wove the theme in with the James Brown song.

Because Game of Thrones shoots all episodes in the fall and goes into post-production in the spring, Djawadi is still hard at work on episode eight. “We’re in the thick of it,” he says, admitting that he doesn’t watch the show when it airs. “My wife watches it, and sometimes she’ll go, ‘Hey, let’s watch Game of Thrones!’ And I’ll be like, ‘Honey, please, I’ve already seen it.’” And he takes not giving away spoilers very seriously. “I feel like a doctor with doctor-patient privilege,” he says. His wife, in particular, has been known to beg for details (can you really blame her?). But he remains steadfast: “I’m like, ‘You can’t get it out of me. You gotta watch it’